Don't Watch Dis-Topia, Watch Dat-Topia

These five dystopian movies might not be masterpieces, but they're all better than -- or at least as good as -- The Giver.

This week's Escape to the Movies is The Giver, because basically nothing else came out this week. It's another dystopia movie, except maybe it's closer to a "failed utopia," but really it's just one more "here's a bad future that's really maybe a metaphor for today." Maybe its original book had the idea to do that with teenagers and youth social-hierarchy before Hunger Games etc. did, but otherwise this genre has existed for a long, long time.

Anyway: Spoiler for this week's review: It's not any good. Here's five not-widely-seen dystopian movies that were better. Or at least more interesting.

HELL COMES TO FROGTOWNIt was hard to stand out amid the glut of post-apocalyptic Mad Max clones littering the 80s, but this one managed to: Pro-Wrestling legend "Rowdy" Roddy Piper is Sam Hell, a mercenary in a post-nuke wasteland tasked with rescuing a group of kidnapped virgins from Frogtown, a society of mutant humanoid amphibians. Why him? Because Sam Hell is one of the last fertile men on Earth, and the plan is for him to join with the rescued women in repopulating the human race.

Somewhat counter-intuitively, the means by which Hell is urged to complete his task involves a government-issued codpiece that will explode if he fails in his mission. Believe it or not, it's actually not quite as much fun as it sounds, but it's certainly unique and it did well enough to earn a sequel, Return to Frogtown, a few years later.